Multidisciplinary Seminar

ACADEMIC PROGRAMS

OVERVIEW

International Studies Undergraduate Minor Program: The College of Arts and Sciences approved the International Studies Undergraduate Minor Program in August 1998 and the first class met in January 1999. Within one year, the minor attracted over forty undergraduates into the program and over 150 minors by April 2003. Students could concentrate their course work into a variety of tracks which included: Diplomacy and Interstate Relations; Global Education; Global Humanities; Global Resources and the Environment; International Communications and Culture; International Development; and International Political Economy. Students could also design their own track with the approval of the International Studies Advisor. Given the great success of the program, the College of Arts and Sciences decided to expand the program to include an undergraduate major and launched the expanded curriculum in August 2003. For more information about the Undergraduate International Studies Major and Minor Programs, please visit http://www.indiana.edu/~intlweb.

Ph.D. Minor in Global Studies: The Global Studies Program encourages interdisciplinary study and critical analysis of transnational issues and problems in a rapidly changing international system. Conventional definitions of world regions as discrete and bounded systems are becoming increasingly blurred as profound contemporary global trends converge. The globalization of economic, political, and social forces, the global impact on new information technologies, and the limits of global environmental sustainability require the study of inter-regional comparisons and the analysis of how these processes inter-relate and transform the international system. This Ph.D. minor program embraces a multidisciplinary approach to the study of global affairs by encouraging students to take course work in the natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities, and the professional schools to understand better emerging world trends.

Other Graduate Student Training: Among the many training options available to graduate students at IU, the graduate seminar Multidisciplinary Seminar on Approaches and Research in Global Studies offered by the Center is unique: it exposes students to a wide range of theoretical and methodological issues and the practical concerns and ethical questions associated with overseas research. The seminar is interdisciplinary featuring faculty members from the arts and sciences and professional schools who have conducted overseas research.  Students who have taken the course in the past have proven to be quite successful in obtaining funding for both pre-dissertation and dissertation research.